COMMENTARY / Jackson's career may have reached bottom / Latest charges against pop singer may be final straw

James Sullivan, Chronicle Pop Culture Critic

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, November 20, 2003

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U.S. pop star Michael Jackson dangles an unidentified child, its head hidden by a towel, over a balcony of the Adlon Hotel in Berlin, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2002, in this image made from television. Jackson, in Germany to attend an awards ceremony, had been waving to German fans, when he brought the baby onto the balcony. (AP Photo/APTN) ** GERMANY OUT: TELEVISION OUT ** less

U.S. pop star Michael Jackson dangles an unidentified child, its head hidden by a towel, over a balcony of the Adlon Hotel in Berlin, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2002, in this image made from television. Jackson, in ... more

COMMENTARY / Jackson's career may have reached bottom / Latest charges against pop singer may be final straw

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In the fame game, it's a fundamental conviction: Any publicity is supposed to be good publicity.

In what could well be the waning days of his career, Michael Jackson seems dead set on singlehandedly proving the adage wrong.

The latest charges against the deposed King of Pop have reduced his former empire, in the 1980s the most colossal in all entertainment, to rubble. He's left with massive debt on a once absurdly lucrative career, a sprawling and presumably depressing fantasy home he calls Neverland and an old love song to a rat named Ben.

Jackson claims he has been persecuted for his affection for young boys. But the current charge of sexual misconduct -- a warrant was issued for his arrest Wednesday by the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department -- is being viewed as a final straw.

The child-dangling incident, the short, weird marriages to Lisa Marie Presley and the nurse who gave the singer two children, the apparently endless reconstructive surgeries: They've all added to the mystique, such as it is, of this most eccentric of stars.

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But there is no mystique in accusations of improper behavior with adolescents. Only deep disgust, with a possible side helping of pity for a clearly deluded man.

Jackson has bounced back before, again and again. In 1995, two years after his first sex scandal resulted in a multimillion dollar out-of-court settlement, he released "HIStory," an audacious two-disc set accompanied by a promotional video that depicted the pop star as a totalitarian monolith.

The album produced just one major single -- paltry by Jackson's outsize standards, considering that his 1983 album "Thriller" sold a record-setting 45 million copies worldwide.

But that song was a No. 1. "You Are Not Alone" was written and produced by R. Kelly, the R&B star who would later join Jackson in a particularly unsavory hall of shame, enduring a sex scandal of his own.

Is it any coincidence that Kelly also worked with Jackson on the sole new song on "Number Ones," the greatest hits collection that coincidentally hit stores on Tuesday? That song is called, oddly enough, "One More Chance."

On Wednesday night, the hits collection, just one of several Jackson has issued in his career, was ranked at No. 24 on Amazon's Web site. Rehashing old material with a bonus DVD of videos, the release won't break any records, but it's likely to sell a respectable amount of copies, as all of Jackson's product always has.

The title of "One More Chance," like so many of Jackson's recent songs, could be construed as an eerie cry for help. The tracks on his last album, 2001's "Invincible," veered madly between wounded appeals for sympathy and infuriated calls to "stop maliciously attacking my integrity."

"Invincible" sold about 2 million copies. Given the wildly unrealistic commercial bar Jackson once set for himself, the album, long overdue and reportedly way over budget, was considered a failure in the marketplace.

But just about every other recording artist on the planet would give his or her right arm to sell 2 million records.

Most of them, though, would stop short of surrendering their first-born son.